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I watched as Telegonus’ ship became a mote on the horizon. The silver presence of Athena faded. And then they were gone, all gone. A cold wind blew in off the water.
At the sheep pen, I saw Telemachus. The grey-eyed goddess had come for him, but she had taken my only son instead. He looked away from me.
Penelope sat at my loom, her hands playing across the weave as if it were a harp. I watched her, caught in her rhythm. It took a few moments before I realized she wasn’t weaving: she was un weaving. The pattern fell to the floor as she worked.
“I meant this for Telemachus,” she explained. “For traveling. It is… no longer necessary.” She looked down at the yarn pooled at her feet. “I would return your wool to you.”
I thought of the story I had from Telemachus. How Penelope had deceived her suitors, stalling for time by weaving a shroud for Laertes. With words she promised to marry them when the shroud was done; at night, with her hands, she picked it apart.
I could not keep the pain out of my voice. “Did you know this would happen?”
Penelope let out a breath. “I did not know for certain, Circe. I admit I did hope.” She stood then, her form unfolding, black mourning cloak flowing to the ground. “I am sorry if I have brought you grief you would not have found otherwise.”
I shook my head. She knew, of course, that my grief was inevitable. Motherhood is learning to let go. My gaze wandered around the room, to the chairs he used to climb on, the table where I fed him his first taste of figs. “He was formed by Aiaia, but he did not belong here.”
Penelope’s bright eyes softened. She seemed to consider touching me but thought better of it. “What will you do now?” she asked, straightening. “Can I be of service?
Telegonus had been my only focus for sixteen years. Without him, an ache inside me grew, an endless emptiness. A vastness of regret. I looked out the window, out to the cold sea. “Perhaps.”
-o-
Penelope came with me to the straits of Erebos, after I won my freedom from Zeus. It was my first voyage off Aiaia in an age. Together we sailed to Scylla, my thousand year shame.
Penelope never asked why we did this thing. Instead she arranged my sheep née fish for Scylla’s buffet, helped me coax my draught of changing down the throat of the most tempting. I thought of Medea and her golden coronet, shrouded in poison. So much of witchcraft was trickery.
“It is a good stratagem,” she assured me. She tended the ship, fastening the rudder so it would not waver. I thought of what Odysseus had said of her: Penelope is a fixed star.
Despite my eternity I was still a flickering brazier. Uneasy doubt began to eat at me. Was this the right choice? Would it even work?
Scylla emerged from the cave and devoured my flock in one coordinated strike. She was fully monstrous now, governed by hunger. Unknowing, she swallowed my poison down, and rallied for a second attack.
Six gnashing mouths each brayed their doglike howl. Scores upon hundreds of mortals had heard that horrible sound in their last moments. Were those deaths on Scylla, or on me? Which of us should truly be punished?
Doubt overwhelmed me; I could not speak. And then, for the first time, I felt Penelope’s warm hand on my arm. I looked at her, and she nodded, gravely. I looked back again at Scylla. I would end it. Punishment had nothing to do with it, only the weight of the future against this moment.
I spoke my word of power.
As Scylla transformed to stone, her heavy legs falling at last beneath the waves and into the whirl of Charybdis, I realized Penelope had mouthed the word with me.
-o-
We made land at sunset, the sky ablaze. A god does not tire in the way that mortals do, but I was flagging, spent from my exertion of will.
Penelope made a camp fire and dug up fresh mussels to roast. They were sea salted and rich, juice running with every bite. I found fresh water and carried what I could back to her in a soaked length of cloth. We had lost our stores in the struggle.
“A day worthy of song,” she mused. “You bested the monster as the Greeks took Troy, a trick from within. Odysseus would have been flattered.” She considered me. “If Telegonus knew, he would swell with pride.”
I tilted my head. His name still stung, but not as deep. I wondered where Telegonus was, if he sparkled in Athena’s favor, if he was happy. I thought he was.
The wind rolled in wild off the sea. Salt spray cooled my face, and the sky began to glitter with stars as my father’s chariot retreated.
“I made Scylla,” I confessed. Penelope did not react, only watched me. “When I was much younger and prone to jealousy. She used to be a nymph.”
Penelope pondered this for a time. She added another branch to her fire, prodding it until sparks flew, then said, “I did wonder why this was the first thing you did with your new freedom.”
“I have lived for a hundred generations with this guilt. How many men she claimed for her appetite, all because I could not stand to be overlooked…”
“You changed her form,” Penelope said. “You did not make her mount that cliff and be who she was. It is hubris, I think, to claim full responsibility.”
I shrugged, but still, I felt a little lighter in her absolution. She asked, “Is all divinity like this? To regret just as a mortal does, but longer?”
I remembered Aeëtes long ago asking me, how does your divinity feel. Like a conch, I’d said, empty, filled with air. Those are not the same. I hadn’t understood.
“Why did you come with me?” I asked her.
“Because you wished it.”
No one can guess what Penelope is doing until it is done. And yet I felt myself trusting her. She had come, and I could not have asked more.
“Odysseus spoke of you very fondly,” she said. “That you sought after skill and knowledge the way other gods seek praise, always seeking to better yourself. He said you were lustrous.”
“Am I?”
“Seeking some praise, then.” She smiled then, more warmly, a winsome expression.
“He spoke often of you as well.” I looked out at the water, remembering how he’d looked as he’d strode up my beach, so solid in his stride. “He said that you were wise, and clever, and constant as a true-made bow.”
Her smile darkened, just a shade. She looked down at her hands, smoothed the cloth of her chiton over her knees. “And yet,” she said, softly. “It was not enough, was it? He could not come home to me, though I stayed true.”
The fire danced in her sparkling eyes. Her dark hair, sun soaked by our sea voyage, glinted gold. She was Helen’s cousin, almost alike in beauty, but now the surface cracked with regret. To my surprise, I found this heartache made her more beautiful, perhaps more so that it was one we shared.
I leaned towards her, and kissed her.
She responded with surprising hunger, returning my kiss with her own. I touched her cheek, slid fingers into her hair. Her hands found my shoulders and, gently, surely, freed them from the bonds of clothing. I let her push me to the sand.
Beside us the fire sputtered and faded, untended.
-o-
Laying with Penelope was not like Daedalus or even Odysseus. Those men had been like fountains, bubbling with power. She was a cup brimming over. I drank deep.
She slept, her back to me, and I watched as the lyre curve of her back rose and fell with every breath. A fixed star, a true-made bow.
And I was an empty conch, filled with nothing, or with air.
She awoke with the sun and yawned, stretched, pulled her chiton back around herself. She looked at me with languid eyes.
“What now?” she asked.
Forever and ever, I thought. I looked to the horizon, stretching off into infinity. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I half expected to disappear into Charybdis, and yet here we are, and I have done all I set out to do.”
“You have your freedom now.” She was brushing out her hair with her fingers. “You could go anywhere. Visit anyone. Family, or friends long lost?”
“There’s no one I care to visit. Perhaps Telegonus, one day, but it is too soon, too…” My voice trailed off.
“My family is in Sparta,” she said. “I am in no hurry to see them, either.”
“My family was always cruel to me. Even my voice was an embarrassment.” I could not say what inspired me to open up to her. Perhaps her knowing way. Her bright eyes. “The gods are unkind as a whole. The endless lives make them indifferent to the validity of others.”
“Not all,” Penelope said. “Not you.”
I didn’t answer. She continued: “I should think a mind like yours might enjoy eternity. There are always more skills to master, more wisdoms to learn. Your luster can only grow.”
“Is that what you’d do?” I asked. “Travel. Learn. Grow. Forever?”
“Yes,” she said, without hesitation.
It was clear then. The idea came to me like a breeze and grew in force, until I bent to it.
We repaired the boat and replenished our stocks, then set sail for that island where I had once brought Glaucos. The island where the Titan fell. The wind was at our back, whistling encouragement.
I scanned the water, but no god rose up to stop us. No lightning came to turn us from our path. Perhaps this was fated, I thought.
We found the beachhead without much trouble. I led Penelope to the bed of flowers sprung from Kronos’ blood, delicate yellow bells that rang with power.
“What are these?” Penelope asked warily.
“Pharmaka,” I replied. “The most powerful witchcraft. Power to make a god, or a monster.”
I made a tincture of their sap. She watched me, bright eyes following my fingers, and when I handed her the cup at last, she met my eyes and drank.
Then we slept.
When we woke, she was little changed, but I could see it. Fine lines around her mouth and eyes had faded; her hair shone. Power glinted off her like moonlight.
We made love again on that beach. Penelope quested for answers in my body, testing the limits of her new form. I responded by kissing her, touching her, watching her find new levels of pleasure.
When we were sated we slept again, there, on the beach that made gods. We were in no rush for anything.
“Sweet mother, I cannot weave,” Penelope murmured into my cheek, between indolent napping and breathless coupling. “Slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl.”
I laughed, recognizing the quote. Her eyes shone like stars now.
“How does your divinity feel?” I asked.
She considered this, wet her lips, tasting herself. “Full. Like the wind that sings music through a vessel. Rushing and beautiful.”
The words rang in me and resonated. The conch is filled with air. “You will not leave me?”
She shook her head. “I am faithful. It is my nature.”
She clasped her hand in mine, long smooth fingers intertwining. The sun rose over the horizon. My father’s chariot climbed the sky, and I stared up at it, smiling and unafraid.